


can't hide

by driedvoices



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedvoices/pseuds/driedvoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://Kh-drabble.livejournal.com">kh_drabble</a> prompt [242]: disguise. An extended scene from KHII, wherein Axel takes an obscenely long amount of time to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't hide

"I figured," Axel says and stops, because Sora's eyes are sad and panicked above him and too loud to speak over, especially now: now, when his throat feels dry and raw and singed; now, when flecks of blackness stream through his vision as though swimming; now, when his voice rolls out of his mouth like smoke, less than smoke, not even leaving a flicker of change in the air to prove that it had existed. This isn't the place for worrying, he wants to tell him. Save it. He wants to call him _kid_ or _runt_ and ruffle his hair. He wants to call him _friend_ , but he's lied enough. 

"I figured," he says again, louder, more clearly, though it sets his lungs ablaze, "that you were just bluffing. That you were just helping him hide and I could smoke him out." 

"Axel?" Sora says, and he's just a bundle of nerves all snapping at once, too many movements in too small a body. But he has a sense of control about him that makes Axel smile with recognition. Urgency with purpose. "Look, this is—we'll get you help, alright? It'll be alright." It comes out like a question, unintentionally. 

"Don't sweat it," Axel says dismissively. He's quiet for a minute and he raises his hand like he's going to touch Sora, his hair or his face, but doesn't. Instead his fingers pass through one of the tendrils darkening his vision and he observes that it's not just in his head. Oh, he realizes, that's—me. 

"You don't have to die," Sora mutters with a pensive and unobtrusive quietness that does not quite fit him. Axel smiles again. 

"I'm overdue," he says dryly, and this is probably where his lucidity starts to go because he says aloud, "where _are_ you?" 

"Sorry," Sora tells him and suddenly seems very, very old; Axel finds old patchwork pieces of people he has known, in the wideness of his eyes and the open, innocent gape of his mouth. "I'm not him."

"I know," Axel sighs. "You don't even look that much like him." A lie, but not. He vaguely imagines Roxas climbing out of a Sora-shaped mask and winces. The pain plaguing his abdomen is hurting less and less like a wound and more like a hole; he decides it's best to get Sora moving, spare him the guilty conscience. 

"You in there anywhere, buddy?" he whispers inaudibly, desperately. Sora's eyes are the same blue but they don't have the same secrets; he's not coming back. Axel lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Then: "Go on, hero. You've got a world to save." Sora hesitates and Axel decides he must look a hell of a lot worse than he thinks he does. "I mean it, go."

He watches Sora leave, lethargic and somehow lighter (he is no longer quite sure where his limbs are). "I'll be waiting," he whispers, lost in the air.


End file.
